


Sing Like You're Winning

by misura



Category: Nightside Series - Simon R. Green
Genre: Book: Nightingale's Lament, Community: smallfandomfest, Crossdressing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-21 02:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dolly Parton simply wasn't meant to look like she was seventeen.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing Like You're Winning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaishiro15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaishiro15/gifts).



> prompt: _Dead Boy/John, Dead Boy never felt so alive after taking in some of John's life energies. John offers since he kinda feels sorry for Dead Boy and he's slightly curious. The start of an relation that begin from an addiction. (after "Nightingale's Lament")_
> 
> Fluffed up considerably, since that's what I do.

Every night was karaoke night at _Divas!_ \- at the performer's own risk, of course. Anyone might dream of being a star, but if you wanted to inflict your singing voice on the other guests, you'd best be sure you had what it took, or else.

The other ladies would be polite about it, naturally; they were, after all, ladies, even if they might have some extra dangly bits hidden under their skirts and petticoats. Still, few people ever made the mistake of climbing up on the stage at _Divas!_ and delivering anything less than a stellar performance more than once.

Dead Boy liked to think he wasn't any kind of exception to that rule.

(In all fairness: he probably wasn't.)

 

Generally speaking, seventeen wasn't such a bad age to be. Many people were able to put up with it just fine - for a year, at least.

The man who now called himself Dead Boy, because it was the name other people had come up with for him, and because he liked it much better than his old one, had been seventeen for over thirty years.

It was getting a bit tiresome, really. True, it was nice to be able to dust off the odd piece of clothing from years and years ago and discover it still fit just fine. He didn't look _bad_ , exactly. On most days, in fact, he looked anything but.

He just looked seventeen. Moments like this, he felt it put a serious cramp in his style.

Dolly Parton simply wasn't meant to look like she was seventeen.

 

"If anyone's recognized me, my reputation's _really_ going to go down the drain this time around." Dead Boy scowled at the too young Dolly that was looking back at him from the mirror.

"You didn't do so bad," soothed John. The fool.

"I'm not talking about _that_ \- I'm talking about _this_. Seriously, John, what is it with you and bathrooms?"

John shrugged. "They make for a good excuse to get a bit of privacy."

"Right. Because any-bloody-body couldn't walk in on us here." Not that Dead Boy particularly cared about _that_ \- anyone who had a problem with Dolly getting a bit of action was welcome to wait in line for a free ass kicking. Embarrassment, Dead Boy firmly believed, was something for people who were still alive. He simply couldn't be bothered with that kind of thing anymore.

"I meant to talk," said John, with something that looked suspiciously like a blush.

Really, Dead Boy wondered sometimes just how many of the stories people told about John Taylor were actually true - and how many were nothing but stories.

He might ask John about it, one day. That might be interesting.

"We can talk just as well at your place. In your bed."

No blushing this time around. "That will be at least another three hours. Maybe four."

Personally, Dead Boy wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being five or six - being in a more or less steady relationship meant he could get sex pretty much any time he felt like it, but what with one case and another, karaoke nights at _Divas!_ weren't as plentiful as they had been, once.

"Feeling your age, John?"

"I noticed some new duct tape around your shoulder the other night," said John. His expression was actually worried. It didn't keep Dead Boy from fantasizing about bouncing him off the wall a few times, just for being an idiot.

"Yes," said Dead Boy. "It's a fashion statement. I'm a very fashionable person." That last bit was entirely true. Unlike _some_ people he might mention, he at least made an effort to keep up. There was something to be said for the classics, naturally - and wearing a trenchcoat when you were a private investigator was definitely a classic, but in John's case, Dead Boy felt fairly sure it wasn't so much that John liked the classics as that he simply utterly lacked imagination.

The other bit ... well, John was really very predictable. Dead Boy would never _ask_ him to share some more of that life energy that he seemed to have so much more of than other people, no matter how good it made him feel, or how badly he craved it, sometimes. If John _offered_ , though - well, that was different, wasn't it?

 

He felt better, after. More alive, he might have said, if he hadn't been Dead Boy.

Since he was, though, all he said was: "Thanks. Pay you back later tonight," even though he knew John probably wouldn't be up for much of anything anymore by the time they made it back to his apartment.

A pair of Kylies looked at them a bit funnily as they walked out of the bathroom, but Dead Boy simply tossed back his head and kept on walking, swinging his hips just a little bit, for John.

 

"Really, I feel like I should have worn my _other_ vaguely insulting tank top," said Cathy.

Her current one said: 'I'm with these two idiots - we're not related'. In bright neon pink letters. Dead Boy rather liked it, even if John insisted on being a stick in the mud about it and acting vaguely insulted. (He mostly liked the colors, anyway, but John's sense of style was even worse than his sense of humor, so he'd considered it more diplomatic not to say that out loud. If it wasn't some shade of black or white, John needed to be talked into wearing it)

"I'm not going to ask," said John determinedly, before he took another swig of something Dead Boy happened to know barely had even a drop of alcohol in it.

John didn't really drink - not the way other people did, and definitely not the way Dead Boy did. Of course, few people were even capable of drinking the way Dead Boy did; being dead did have its good points. Dead Boy hadn't yet decided if the entertainment value of getting John drunk just once outweighed the possible consequences.

For the moment, John provided him with quite enough amusement while remaining sober - to say nothing of a pleasant amount of danger, gratuitous violence and kicking the crap out of the ungodly. Death was good, for the moment, and Dead Boy always tried not to look too far beyond the right now. It was less upsetting, generally speaking.

There would be plenty of time to worry about tomorrow some other day.


End file.
